To expand this thread to cover a wider interpretation of the question it posits than simply the OP's Whiskey Tax:

I (an Englishman) love America and Americans. I am in constant e-contact with a dear sister-in-law married for 50 years to a Chicago-an; and with a first-cousin in Virginia; and with the closest-possible friends in Santa Monica. I have visited the US many times, Coast-to-coast, and always been hospitably received and felt greatly at home. But someone [a fellow-Brit] once said to me, "The trouble is, the Land Of The Free was founded jointly on genocide and slavery; and not just in the South — notoriously Thomas Jefferson, one of the revered Founding Fathers and author of their Dec of Ind, owned slaves".

I endeavoured to frame a riposte; but couldn't think of one. Is there one?